The Internet Wishlist aggregates ideas and concepts from people across the web regarding products and features people would like to see. My wish is outlined below:

Several years ago, I was a victim of credit card skimming, a form of credit card theft. My card’s information could have been stolen at any of several different locations, on any of several days. Because I cannot pinpoint the exact date and location of the theft, the police really can’t do much about it.

When credit card skimming occurs, it often results in multiple victims (the person stealing the card information does it to many cards over the course of time, usually at a single location, or a few individual locations). If all of those victims were to populate a database with information about the dates and locations of recent transactions, a pattern might emerge showing a likely location where the thefts occurred.

For example, during a street festival, there is increased patronage of restaurants. Many of the restaurants allow patrons to pay using a credit card, and the waiter or waitress takes the card out of the patron’s sight to process the transaction. This is a perfect opportunity to skim cards, especially when it is busy. The patrons come from a wider variety of locations than normal. After each victim’s card is skimmed, they’ll usually see fraudulent charges as early as one to two weeks after the original theft. Each victim files a police report with the police where they live, but depending on how often they eat out, they may not know exactly when or where their card was skimmed. Each victim logs into a nationwide reporting site, and provides the following information:

• Their contact information
• The police report number and jurisdiction where the report was filed (helps prevent contamination with false data)
• The name and address of each establishment where the victim used the card prior to the date the fraudulent charges appeared (system can use slick searching/database to help with addresses)
• The date or date range each valid charge was made.

The collected data can then be used to create maps, which, provided enough data, could show establishments with coinciding transactions on coinciding days. The system could notify victims of possible locations and permit them to print out the pertinent information plus a list of associated police report numbers (provided that each victim authorized the system to share that information) that the victim could then provide to their local police department to assist with the investigation.

Bonus points given if police departments are offered special accounts to allow investigators to receive notifications about incidents in their jurisdiction. The site operators would also need to be prepared to respond to subpoenas for evidence. Measures should be taken to protect user information unless they have opted-in to its release.